How to grow a commercial solar business? | Commercial Solar Business Lead Generation

James Dooley and Kasra Dash break down the smartest ways to grow a commercial solar business using modern digital marketing. They explain why commercial solar requires education-led marketing, how LinkedIn outreach and social ads can unlock demand, and why SEO and long form content help convert high value leads. They also cover the risks of PPC, the benefits of exclusive lead generation, and why shoulder niches like EV chargers and heat pumps can drive extra enquiries through reciprocal referral networks.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

Kasra Dash:
so if I am looking to grow a commercial solar business and if let's say I have some marketing budget what do you recommend spending on how how can I get a consistent flow of inquiries

James Dooley:
so if you're looking to grow specifically a commercial solar business then I'm looking obviously not on the residential side of things I'm looking on the commercial so I know that in the UK there's a lot of government grants and tax relief available for commercial solar there's actually tax incentives that you can save off your incorporation tax and stuff like that so my first major play would be educational blog posts but also once I've done those educational blog posts or maybe even videos I would be running those social media ads everywhere because people might not know about it so it's not just this isn't just the major play for doing SEO and PPC CU people might not even know about it to be certain in for that yeah right okay so I want to be doing the disruptive marketing to get in front of potential business owners so it LinkedIn ads could be a good one are even connecting with people on LinkedIn that is the CEO the CFO um the managing director trying to connect with them people and saying by the way did you know that there's a t tax incentive here tax relief that allows you to do that that was be one of my first plays my second play would be I want leads today right now SEO I would still want to do SEO and try and educate people and try and rank for commercial solar panel installs in whatever areas that are work but that's going to be 6 months 12 months I mean you you might be able to do it within a few months but generally speaking SEO is a longer term play PPC I find to be relatively expensive um in trying to go after that from so for that reason I'd be teaming up with lead generation companies over at fat rank.com we provide a consistent flow of inquiries for commercial solar leads now what I would recommend is going over to Flat rank filling in your details and going through the qualification process if accepted you will start to get leads on a consistent basis and only pay for converted jobs the cave art to this is you should not be thrown all your eggs into fat rank.com as being the sole supplier of your lead you should be diversifying you should be trying to use some other lead generation companies but please I'm asking you to check what return investment you get from other lead generation companies and make certain you're vetting them and get and choosing the best ones because a lot of lead generation companies will resell that same lead to four or five different companies the good thing about fat rank is we give you exclusive real time leads and you only pay on conversion but away from lead generation which is going to get you a consistent FL now of inquiries what's your thoughts on PPC or social media ads or would you even do anything like traditional marketing

Kasra Dash:
uh PC I personally avoid I've just had bad experiences with it um the the reasons for that is first of all you get what's called click fraud so you can have your competitors clicking on your ads burning your budget every single day and not even converting into actual paying clients um or paying customers then you obviously got like sh window Shoppers so like for example somebody might could um actually fit click on three different ads and they might not even decide to go with any of them so again that that's just another wasted let's say1 12030 just for that one click um so it starts to rack up very quickly I think that a much safer strategy would be to start focusing on your social proofing so obviously your social media presence if you've just done a massive job for a commercial solar farm let's say um making certain that you've got nice video footage nice um before and afters potentially um in some cases I've also seen commercial um solar businesses actually doing like a a video testimonial with the person they've installed the the actual um solar panel for um so do doing video do testimonials with the actual client thems that can definitely help with the trust Factor again so some of these things they're they're probably going to help you convert the actual job it might not get you to actually land more clients but when people are actually checking oh is is James dly solar panels better or is KRA Dash solar panels better and if I've got the video footage obviously yours right so let's say they end up going with you because you've got all all of the the the five star reviews the video testimonials that's just going to end end up essential paying for itself so doing the actual social media front that definitely helps building an SEO optimized website I know you've just said that um SEO you shouldn't look at it from a month-to-month Roi basis it should be like more of like a okay I'm going to invest in too for the next 12 months and then I'm going to look at what what that's actually brought in so do doing SEO um that can definitely help like building out Pages for like for example commercial solar energy commercial solar battery storage um EV chargers for commercial uh properties stuff like that you've obviously got as well energy tariff optimization as well so some businesses want to optimize their energy and stuff like that so ranking for all of those keywords building out individual Pages that's that's all just on the services side but I would also do location based web pages as well so commercial Solar Company Manchester commercial Solar Company old them going after all of those definitely would help and then obviously the blog articles that you mentioned um and then running paid ads to those blog articles educating people

James Dooley:
yeah I mean something that you touched on there which I think is absolutely great right is you touched on EV chargers right now a commercial Solar Company might not install the EV Chargers but I would still want to rank for Ev charges even if I didn't install it he and I'd also want to rank for heat pumps so airs Source heat pumps and the reason why I want to in the reason why I would want to rank them in try to get inquiries for them is because normally when you're looking to have an air source heat pump it's expensive to run so then if you can then turn around and then say look if you are looking for an Sr seat pump we'll put you in touch with a really good contractor it's one of them with business you scratch my back I scratch yours so if you can get kadash Sr heat pumps some is and you didn't do commercial solar who are you going to refer back to for commercial solar us exactly so from there then you can start building up relationships with EV charger companies or air source heat pump companies and and do what I always call as shouldering niches where I can complement your work and you can complement my work I'll give you work you give me work and I think that the EV charges and the heat pumps are a great time for people to be looking for commercial solar I also think if someone's looking for commercial solar they might then want to upsell them EV charges and um heat pumps so it can work both ways so I think that's a great strategy I don't only mainly do that on from an SEO standpoint not really from a ppcr paid ads but from an SEO standpoint yes I would definitely want to be ranking for it if I'm a commercial Solar Company looking to grow my business I want to grow my network I would also be networking on LinkedIn to try to connect with EV charger company business owners and SRC pump business owners I think that's a great strategy what you mentioned there for how to grow a commercial solar panel company yeah definitely so if you guys do want a free um strategy call with uh fat Rank and just to make certain that you guys actually do qualify for the consistent flow of inquiries the link is down below or head over to fat rank.com